Wireless communications systems are starting to make wider use of unlicensed spectrum. However, with the use of unlicensed spectrum, there is the uncertainty that the physical medium for transmission may not be available at the desired time of the intended wireless signal transmission. With paging operations in licensed spectrum, paging signaling from a base station can be scheduled, and it may be assumed that a paging request from a core node to a base station to page a UE is carried out. However, with unlicensed spectrum, the base station may be unable to transmit a core node requested page due to current unavailability of the unlicensed spectrum in the vicinity of the base station. This creates uncertainty at the core node requesting the page, since the core node does not know the reason that its page request has not been responded to. The core node can not efficiently make paging decisions, e.g., regarding expanding the page range, if the core node does not know the reason for the paging failure.
Based on the above discussion there is a need for new methods and apparatus for supporting paging and particularly paging in unlicensed spectrum.